


Family Portraits

by Piscaria



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon compliant through 3A, Gen, M/M, background Derek/Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1398766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/pseuds/Piscaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cora picked up the overflowing recycling bin, rolling her eyes at the crumpled papers on top. Derek always insisted on crumpling papers, no matter how much Cora bitched at him for it. She picked up the topmost sheet, smoothing it out to take up less room. Then she froze, staring down at her mother's face, sketched in Derek's fluid pencil lines.</p>
<p>This is a remix of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/976510">Hands Too Shaky To Hold</a> by dedougal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Portraits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dedougal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedougal/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Hands Too Shaky to Hold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/976510) by [dedougal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedougal/pseuds/dedougal). 



> Many thanks to Mothlights for the speedy beta work! Any remaining mistakes are my own.

> “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” – Charles Dickens, _David Copperfield_  
> 

When the Greyhound rumbled into the Beacon Hills station, Cora yawned and rubbed her eyes, shouldering the single duffel bag that held all of her worldly possessions. It had been a 16-hour flight from Buenos Aires to San Francisco, and then another four hours to Beacon Hills by bus. As she had at the bank over a year ago, she recognized Derek’s scent before she caught sight of him. He wasn’t her pack, not anymore, but he still smelled like family, like climbing trees in the Preserve and curling up with a good book on a stormy day, like ashes and sorrow and loss. She turned towards the scent and found Derek sitting near the back of the station, a Starbucks cup on the bench beside him. He smiled when he saw her, but his eyes looked terrified. He smelled just as nervous as she did. Not for the first time, Cora wondered if it had been a mistake to return to Beacon Hills.

“Thanks,” she said, when Derek thrust the coffee towards her. It was black and sweet, the way she liked it. Involuntarily, a smile touched her lips. They’d only gotten coffee together a handful of times, but Derek had remembered her order. She reached for Derek at the same time he reached for her duffel, and there was an awkward shuffle before he wrapped his arms around her, pulling him up against his chest in a hug that was a little too tight, even for a werewolf. 

“It’s good to see you,” he said gruffly. 

She smiled, blinking back the sudden wetness in her eyes. Gripping the duffel before he could try for it again, Cora marched out of the station towards the parking lot, leaving Derek to catch up with her. 

* * * 

The concrete floors of the loft were still stained from Boyd’s blood, and whenever Cora glanced up, her eyes fixed on the ceiling pipe Kali had used to stab Derek, newly-mended with plumber’s tape. She wondered why her brother stayed here when all that surrounded him were horrible memories. Her first night back, she dreamed of rising water and whimpers of pain, of lying helpless, fever-ridden, while Derek sliced opened the veins in his wrists and offered her a cup brimming with his own, warm blood, his eyes glowing electric blue.

When Scott arrived the next morning with a formal offer to join his pack, Cora was so keyed up from her nightmares that she couldn’t help snarling at him. 

“I don’t need your pity!” 

“It’s not pity,” Scott said, his voice warm and sincere, like Cora was a wild animal he was trying to win over with kindness. “You’re Derek’s sister. You always have a place here.”

Cora forced her hand into a fist to keep herself from going for his throat. Claws bit into her palms, and she anchored herself on the pain.

“This was Hale territory before your grandparents were even born,” she informed Scott. “I sure as hell don’t need _you_ to give me a place here!” 

She shoved past him, stomping into the elevator. Derek called after her, but she ignored him. At the entrance to the building, she hesitated for a second, listening for the squeal of the elevator or footsteps on the stairs. The wolfish part of her hoped one of them would try to follow. She ached for a good fight. But nobody followed her.

Cora slammed through the front door, out onto the maze of streets around the old industrial district. She let the momentum carry her back to the Beacon Hills she remembered from childhood, to the quiet downtown streets near the elementary school and the library, to the highway leading out of town. When she passed the parking lot for the Nature Preserve, she turned, cutting through the trees in the familiar shortcut back to the old Hale property.

New grass grew over the site of the old house, like it had never been there at all. The county must have filled in the basement where her family had burned to death with dirt. Cora walked a slow circuit around the perimeter, then settled cross-legged onto the grass where she was pretty sure the living room used to be. She breathed in slowly through her nose, wondering if she was imagining the lingering traces of smoke and ash. She wondered if her family’s screams still echoed through the woods on the Wolf Moon. 

The sound of screaming had brought her running back from the creek where she’d been playing that day. She’d burst through the clearing to see the house in flames, hands desperately reaching through the shattered basement window. In a story, Cora might have been the hero, there to rescue them all. But since it was real life, she had only recoiled off the mountain ash barrier, falling backwards onto the flame-warmed grass. Through the smoke and the shimmer of magic, she’d stared, horrified, at their faces, until her mother’s voice had broken through the screaming and the sizzle of wood and burning flesh. 

“Cora, run! Run as far as you can!” she yelled, her voice rumbling with an Alpha’s authority.

There was no choice but to respond to that voice. The wolf inside her had surged to the surface, overwhelming Cora’s conviction to stay, to help. She’d fled into the woods on all fours, running faster than she ever had in her life. The pack bonds broke one by one. Each death had sent Cora sprawling to the ground before her mother’s command caught hold of her, forcing her back to her feet again. She'd been fifty miles out of Beacon Hills before the compulsion had broken with a wave of agony so intense that Cora had thought it might kill her, too. She'd fallen to the ground, heaving, and when the wolf hadn't pressed her back into motion, she’d known her mother was gone. Without an Alpha’s power to sustain them, the few remaining pack bonds had already started to flicker. Cora wouldn’t feel when Laura, Derek, and Uncle Peter inevitably succumbed to the flames, and so she mourned them all the harder for it.

Curled up on the forest floor that day, the woods smelling of smoke, roasting flesh, and her own vomit, Cora had thought briefly of returning home. But not even the wolf was brave enough to face what she knew she’d. Instead, she’d kept running, hadn’t ever stopped, really. Now she pressed her face into the bright grass, wondering why she’d let Derek convince her to return.

An hour before sunset, she heard hum of the Camaro’s engine as it pulled onto the grass where the driveway used to be. She listened to the door slam, caught Derek’s scent, ripe with anxiety, but refused to sit up. He dropped quietly on the grass beside her, and she glanced at him sidelong. With his beard and his muscles, he looked like their father, and she hated him a little for it. The Derek she’d loved had been a scrawny sixteen-year-old, his fingers perpetually stained with paint or charcoal. He’d shoved his sketchbooks into the hands of anyone who would sit still long enough to flip through them and coo about his talent. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen a sketchbook at the loft, not even so much as a pencil. Fair enough, she supposed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d written a poem, for all that her walls back home had been papered with them, silly, girlish scribblings about horses and trees. 

They sat in silence as the sun sank below the tree line. When the last glimmer of red in the sky snuffed out, Derek stood, offering Cora his hand. She let him haul her to her feet. 

In a booth at Cyclone Burger, with grease on her fingers and a heavy, leaden feeling in her stomach, she finally asked, “How can you stand it?”

Derek broke a fry in half, dipping one end into the little paper ketchup cup. He shoved it into his mouth and shrugged, not meeting Cora’s eyes. She didn’t press it, but she found herself studying Derek under the fluorescent lights, wondering why he insisted on punishing himself by staying in Beacon Hills.

* * *

During Cora’s second week back in Beacon Hills, Stiles showed up at the loft with a forged transcript from an imaginary school in Argentina and a blithe reassurance that the guidance office would never bother to check it.

“Not interested!” Cora said at once. 

“You can’t spend your whole life working out and watching _Game of Thrones_ ,” Derek said, sounding like a father or an Alpha, not the brother who still looked at Cora like he thought she might go up in smoke. 

Cora bristled. She hadn’t had a father or an Alpha in years. She didn’t need one now. But she couldn’t say that to Derek, not unless she wanted to see that resigned, self-martyring expression he always got when she lashed out at him. The brother she remembered would have gone for her throat for half of the things she’d said to this Derek, who weathered her anger without protest, like he thought he deserved it. That expression always brought her back to the bank, where he’d let Boyd and Cora practically rip him apart without lifting a hand against him. 

So instead, she just said, “What, like you bothered getting a diploma?” 

Sure enough, Derek drew himself up in indignation instead of withdrawing into himself in shame. Cora grinned in anticipation, waiting for deflection or excuses, which she could then throw back in his face. 

But what Derek actually said was, “I have a BA in history!” 

On the sofa, where he’d been watching their exchange, Stiles flailed so hard that he knocked off one of the cushions. Derek reached behind him and cuffed Stiles across the back of the head, never breaking eye contact with Cora. Her mind was reeling, trying to fit this new information into the vague story of Derek’s life, post-fire, she’d assembled from the few clues he gave her. She wanted to ask why he’d majored in history and not in art, and whether Laura had gone to college, too. 

But Stiles beat her to the questions. “Dude, what the hell did you think you were going to do with a history degree?” he asked, leaning over the back of the couch.

“More than I could manage as a drop-out,” Derek shot right back, still glaring at Cora.

She slumped, already knowing she was going to lose this argument. There was no winning with Derek when his jaw firmed up like that. 

“Need I point out that I’ve never actually gone to school?” she asked in a last-ditch effort to get out of this. That was technically true. Their mom had home-schooled all of them until high school, not wanting to risk them turning in the middle of recess. 

Stiles brightened, bouncing up off the sofa. “No worries, I’ll tutor you!” he said. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.”

So Cora found herself climbing into Stiles’s Jeep the next morning, and the morning after that, until it became a habit. Twice a week, Stiles stayed over after school to walk through algebra problems with her. Sometimes, a low aroma of arousal wafted off Stiles as he and Cora sat together on the couch with her math book between them as Derek did pull-ups across the loft. 

She glanced at him sideways, thinking about the last boy she’d slept with, in Argentina, about how Stiles’s cheekbones might feel beneath her hands. Stiles was cute, in a skinny way. Not really her type, but indisputably adorable. He had nice eyes. Long fingers. He might be fun for a few nights, as long as he knew that was all he could get from her. Cora did not do romance. 

But any possibility of hooking up with Stiles disappeared the night he got drunk on cheap whiskey and confessed, “I really like your brother.” 

“Derek?” Cora asked, dumbfounded.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Do you have other brothers?” 

“Not anymore,” Cora snapped, automatic. At Stiles’s crestfallen face, she said, “Sorry, it’s just . . . _Derek?!_

"I know," Stiles moaned, burying his face in his knees. "It's ridiculous! He's ridiculous!" He glanced up at her through his spread fingers and asked, "Do I even have a chance?" 

She wanted to say no. But she remembered the way Derek's eyes lingered on Stiles when he came over to tutor Cora, how Derek always made sure to be home during those sessions. She’d thought it was some misguided protective streak, Derek playing the chaperone, but really, she didn’t know. She didn’t know if Derek had ever dated anybody besides Jennifer or Paige, whether he’d be interested in Stiles or not. There was so much she didn’t know about her brother.

"He's twenty-five," she said. It wasn't, quite, an answer.

"I know," Stiles agreed miserably. "And he's gorgeous. He's out of my league."

She might have argued the point, but Stiles chose that moment to vomit all over the forest floor. 

“There are bums on the street who are out of your league right now!” she snapped at him, and dug into his pocket until she found his keys. 

* * *

To everybody’s surprise but Derek’s, English turned out to be Cora’s best subject. She’d loved reading and writing as a little girl, but in her senior English class, she discovered a new love – taking stories apart to find out why they worked. They’d just spent a month on Hamlet, and were following up with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. She found herself fascinated with Stoppard’s re-imagining of Shakespeare’s famous play, with the idea that the minor characters in one story might go on to be protagonists of their own. 

When her English teacher announced they could get extra credit for watching the movie and writing a compare-and-contrast essay, Cora insisted on hosting a movie night. She curled up on the armchair, rapt, watching a coin fly into the air and land on heads again and again and again. 

"Want me to do yours next?" Kira asked in her ear, and Cora jumped. Kira smiled apologetically, holding up a bottle of nail polish. In the other armchair, Lydia had her hands out in front of her, admiring Kira’s work. The pose reminded Cora suddenly of Laura, who’d constantly fussed over her nails, complaining every time the shift ruined a manicure.

"No," Cora said, a little too sharply. She took a deep breath, let out. "I'm good," she said. Smiling awkwardly, Kira retreated to Derek’s desk chair to do her own nails, safely away from the couch, where Stiles, Scott, and Isaac were having some kind of ridiculous contest to see who could fit the most pretzels in their mouth. Cora glanced at the screen, realized she didn’t have the faintest idea what was happening. 

Stiles leaped to his feet, whooping, arms raised high over his head in victory, his cheeks still puffed out with half-chewed pretzels. Some of them were falling out of the edges of his mouth. 

“Jesus Christ, will you just shut up?” Cora snapped, half rising out of her chair. “Some of us are actually watching the movie!” 

“ _Such_ a Hale,” Stiles muttered around his mouthful of pretzels, turning for some reason to glare at Derek, who was lingering in the kitchen with an expression that had to mirror the one on Cora’s own face, like he was questioning all of his life choices right now. Catching Stiles’s eyes on him, Derek grabbed a bag of chips from the counter. He lobbed the bag at Stiles, who caught it, glare melting beneath the warmth of his grin. 

Shaking her head, Cora slumped back into her armchair, feeling miles apart from the other teenagers in the room. She was only a year older, but it might as well have been ten. _What the hell am I doing here?_ she wondered. Then she glanced up at Derek, who was lingering in the of the kitchen, looking just as lost and out of place as she felt. Their eyes met, and in that moment, she knew, absolutely knew, that he felt just as out of place in Beacon Hills as she did. 

They swept pretzels out from under the couch after everyone else had gone home. Derek knelt to hold the dustpan for her, his gaze distant. When he started to rise, Cora stopped him with a touch to the shoulder. She set the broom against the wall and dropped herself down to sit cross-legged on the floor beside her brother. 

“Why do you stay here, Derek?” 

Startled, he glanced up at her, face going guarded. “The loft is convenient,” he said. “It’s big enough to train in and –”

“Not the loft! Why do you stay in Beacon Hills? You're not happy here. Anyone can see that." 

“It’s complicated,” he said, rising, dustpan in hand. 

In a flash, Cora was in front of him. “So, uncomplicated it! What are you punishing yourself for?”

“Let it go!” Derek snapped. The dustpan clattered to the concrete floor, pretzel crumbs spilling everywhere. He shoved past her, starting towards the stairs. Cora stopped him with a hand around his wrist. He turned a venomous glare on her. She met it squarely, a small flicker of satisfaction warming her from inside. Any hint of real emotion was a welcome sign in Derek. Too often, he was eerily calm, withdrawn into whatever horrors waited for him in his own mind. 

“I didn’t get you back after all this time just to watch you make yourself miserable,” Cora said. “You deserve better than that, Derek!” 

Derek flinched. “You don’t know what I deserve. You don’t know lots of things.” 

“Then tell me!” Cora demanded. 

He pulled away from her, but instead of heading towards the stairs, he dropped heavily onto the sofa, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Look,” he said. “What you’re asking, it’s . . . it’s big. I didn’t even tell Laura.” 

“Do you wish you had?” Cora asked, dropping onto her knees across from him to peer into his face.

He shrugged, not meeting her gaze. “Sometimes.”

“Then don’t make the same mistake twice,” Cora said. "Tell me. Now. Don't wait until it's too late. I could be dead tomorrow." 

He lifted his head, eyes wide, a little panicked. 

Cora sighed, squeezing his shoulder, tight. "Look, whatever it is, telling me can't be worse than making yourself miserable like this." 

He let out a strangled laugh. Through the hand still gripping his shoulder, Cora could feel fine tremors running through his body. "You wouldn't say that if you knew what I did."

"So tell me!" Cora said. "Let me make that decision for myself. I deserve that much, don't I?"

Reluctantly, Derek gave a tiny nod of his head. Satisfied, Cora settled back on her heels, waiting. When Derek finally spoke, his voice was barely audible, even to werewolf senses. 

"Do you know how Kate Argent got into the house?" 

He told her all of it -- how he'd shown off for Kate when he noticed her watching him at the community pool, how she'd come up to talk to him, how they'd fucked in the backseat of her car two nights later. Halfway through his story, Cora stood, feeling like she was going to be sick if she kept looking at him. She crossed to the window, staring out at the dark sky. Derek kept talking, as if, now that he'd started, he couldn't stop. His voice was gaining strength, every word dripping with self-recrimination. 

"Then she said that she wanted to sneak into my room, do it one night while Mom and Dad were asleep. She said it would be hot, and I was so fucking stupid, I went along with it!" 

"No," Cora whispered, screwing her eyes shut against the sting of unshed tears. Her hands had clenched into fists at her side. She pressed her forehead to the window glass, feeling it cool beneath her flushed skin. 

"I did it, Cora," Derek said, as if she hadn’t spoken. "They're dead because of me! I gave her a key. I showed her how to get past the security system. I stole Laura's perfume to mask her scent. I might as well have wrapped our entire pack up with a fucking bow!" 

With a cry, Cora slammed her fist into the window, relishing the crack of glass, the sharp, shallow pain through her knuckles. That was for her family, she thought, for Mom and Dad, for her older brother, Brandon, and her younger sister, Emily. For Aunt May and Uncle Mike, for her little human cousins, Jason and Rose. 

A web of sharp fissures radiated out from the red splatter of her blood on the glass. Cora drew back her fist, and slammed it in again. That was for Kate playing her older brother like a fucking violin, and for Derek being stupid enough to let himself get played. 

The glass shattered. Cool, night air flooded the room, breaking through the stifling reek of fresh anguish layered over the subtler notes of misery that had already settled into the very bones of this building. Cora turned, searching the room for something else to destroy.

Derek still waited on the couch, head bowed as if waiting for an executioner. The sight of him drained the murderous rage from her. She exhaled shakily, crossing the room on unsteady legs. Derek didn’t look up when she dropped onto the couch beside him.

"I can't stay here," she heard herself say. “Not in this building. Not in this town. I just can’t.”

He nodded grimly, staring down at the floor, shoulders slumped. He was readying himself, Cora knew, for her to leave him alone again, with this pack of teenagers who saw him only as a failed Alpha. She wondered if any of them knew that he loved to draw, that he spoke three languages, that he'd inadvertently helped to burn their family alive. 

"Come with me!" 

Derek’s head snapped up. Beneath the surprise in his eyes, Cora thought she glimpsed the faintest glimmer of hope. 

“You’re my brother,” Cora said, in response to the question he obviously wanted to ask. Through the tears streaming down her face, she managed a weak smile. “And it’s time that we both put the past behind us.” 

* * *

They ended up in San Francisco, which was close enough to Beacon Hills that they could return if an emergency truly threatened the pack (Derek remained firm on that), but far enough that they no longer caught the ghost of smoke on the air. They had a cursory meeting with the Alpha of the local pack, promising to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble. For two weeks, they camped out in abandoned buildings, easily scaring off any competition for them. They ate clam chowder from sourdough bowls at Fisherman’s Wharf, drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, took a ride on a cable car. They trekked from one end of the city to another, by bus and on foot, learning the feel of the different neighborhoods. In the Western Addition, Cora pointed out a for-sale sign in front of a ramshackle Victorian, and moments later, Derek was on his cell arranging a viewing with the realtor.

The house, like all the others on its street, nudged up against the houses on either side of it in a tidy row, so different from the expansive grounds that used to surround the Hale house. The trim was peeling and the roof needed serious work. The hardwood floors were scuffed and sad. All of the rooms seemed cramped after the immense space of the loft. But a window seat hugged the curve of the immense bay windows, perfect for curling up with a cup of coffee and a notebook. When the realtor led them upstairs to the floored roof space lined with bookshelves and flooded with afternoon light, Cora took one look at Derek’s face, and knew they were going to take the place. 

A liberal application of cash from their parents’ life insurance policy cut through much of the bureaucracy around the process of buying a house. No sooner were the papers signed than they dove into the renovations. For a solid year, the house was a disaster zone, all plaster dust and plastic sheeting. They argued over paint colors, insulted each other’s taste in shelving. 

Cora loved every moment of it. 

Derek was different outside of Beacon Hills, his eyes a little brighter, his shoulders a little more relaxed. After a month in San Francisco, he disappeared into his bathroom one morning, and emerged clean-shaven. He looked years younger without the beard, less like their father and more like the teenager she remembered. Kneeling side by side with him, stupidly competing to see who could install the new flooring the fastest, Cora felt like she was finally catching glimpses of the Derek she’d loved before the fire. They painted the front door red because Derek said it was lucky, and nailed a horseshoe above it, since Cora thought they needed all the good luck they could get. They scoured flea markets and antique stores looking for furniture. They hung a mirror over the couch to reflect back the light of the windows. Cora brought cushions to fill the window seat, bright, colored fabrics that reminded her of South America. 

At Derek’s insistence, Cora signed up for community college. She was in the campus bookstore, gathering her textbooks for the first quarter, when she glanced up and saw a display of drawing pencils against the back wall, sketchbooks stacked neatly on the shelves beside them. Derek, as a teenager, would have trailed his hands lovingly over the displays of handmade paper and tested out each of the pens and pencils in turn. She filled her basket full of pencils and charcoals, brought a thick sketchbook. At the last moment, she threw in a beautiful leather journal for herself. They sat in her backpack like a secret all the bus ride home. 

Derek was setting up the grill in the backyard. “How was it?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. 

“Fine,” Cora said, leaning against the back door frame. She thought of handing him the sketchbook, but hesitated, suddenly shy. “I’m going to put my books away,” she said, already running up to her room. Taking a quick detour into Derek’s bedroom, she laid the sketchbook and pencils across his mattress, knowing he wound find them. With a lighter heart, she jogged downstairs, taking the plate of raw hamburger patties from Derek.

“Let me cook,” she said. “You always burn them.” 

Derek rolled his eyes, but stepped aside. She grinned as she placed the hamburger patties on the grill, imagining Derek’s face when he saw stepped into his bedroom and saw her present. He never said a word about the art supplies, but the next morning, there was fresh coffee waiting for her when she padded downstairs around noon, and Derek swept her into a tight hug. 

A few days later, Cora picked up the overflowing recycling bin, rolling her eyes at the crumpled papers on top. Derek always insisted on crumpling papers, no matter how much Cora bitched at him for it. She picked up the topmost sheet, smoothing it out to take up less room. Then she froze, staring down at her mother's face, sketched in Derek's fluid pencil lines. It was a rough sketch, the eyes a little too close together, the jaw line not quite right. But her eyes were perfect, wise and calm, the way she always looked right after shifting. Over the years, Cora had forgotten the precise shape of her mother’s eyes, the pattern of freckles across her nose. Now, staring down at Derek’s drawing, she remembered. 

Smoothing the sketch out as best she could, Cora tucked it safely inside her journal, nestled up against the first page, which was still as pristine as ever. 

* * *

It wasn’t that she didn’t try to write.

Every day, Cora opened the beautiful, leather-bound journal she’d bought herself and stared at the neatly-lined pages, trying to work up the nerve to make that first pen-stroke. In her head, she saw an immense and winding novel, Dickens-esque in its complexity, full of characters drawn from the family portraits that had burned in the fire. It was perfect, with sentences as long and winding as the stories her mother used to tell them before bedtime, full of wolves and shapeshifters, guardian trees and a goddess moon. In her mind, it was already complete and perfect, the stuff of Pulitzers. Her hand trembled and she gripped the pen tighter until it broke, splattering blue ink across the creamy paper.

"Fuck!" she roared, dropping the notebook onto the cushioned window seat and throwing the ruined pen away. She scrubbed at her eyes, trying to calm down, to breathe. Derek appeared in the doorway, bare-chested and sweaty from where he'd been doing pull-ups on the bar he'd installed in the attic.

"Are you okay?" he asked, eyeing her cautiously.

She nodded, let out a shaky exhale. "Pen broke " she said, and held up her blue-stained palm to show him because that was easier than explaining that she didn't actually know how to write the story she'd been rehearsing in her head since she stopped waiting for somebody to rescue her. That day, she’d crept into the back of a Hostess truck heading south, with nothing in the world besides the grass-stained clothes she always wore to play outside. _This will be an adventure_ , she'd told herself, opening a box of Twinkies and shoving one into her mouth. _Someday, I will write this all down._ From the sympathetic smile Derek gave her, she thought he might understand anyway, though. She thought about the crumpled sketches in the recycling bin.

"You have a little . . . " Derek said, gesturing towards his own eyes. She glanced in the mirror over the back of the sofa and saw the blue ink smeared across her eyes and the top of her cheekbones. As she scrubbed ineffectually at it, Derek said, "I thought maybe you'd changed your mind about make-up.”

She growled and launched herself at him like she had as a little girl, when they sparred in the front lawn, wielding the broken pen like a dagger. He fended her off, and by the time they broke apart, both of them had ink smears across their cheeks and arms, and they were both laughing harder than they had since the fire.

* * * 

No new sketches appeared in the recycling bin, though Cora kept her eyes out for them. After a month, she cautiously asked Derek how his drawing was going over dinner. 

He slumped. “I can see their faces whenever I close my eyes,” he said. “But as soon as I try to draw them . . .” 

“Maybe you’re trying too hard,” Cora suggested.

He toyed with his spoon, fidgeting the way he only did when he was especially nervous. “I think I need more practice,” he said. “On something else. Not on them. I was thinking about taking an art class.”

“You should!” Cora said, grinning at him over her soup bowl. 

A few weeks later, Derek headed out the door for his first art class. Watching from the window seat as he trotted down the street towards the bus station, his sketchbook tucked safely beneath one arm, Cora felt strangely proud of him. The unfamiliar swell of emotion in her chest was almost enough to make her go for her journal again.

Almost. 

Cora’s afternoon class got cancelled that day, so she was home by the time Derek returned from class, his head ducked almost shyly as he stepped through the front door, so unlike the way he used to strut around with his sketchbook after class.

“So, let’s see,” she said, gesturing towards the sketchbook. It didn’t take much bullying before he passed it over, an oddly hesitant look in his eyes. She opened the book, flipping hurriedly past dozens of clumsy sketches of too-familiar faces, recognizable despite Derek’s clear lack of practice. Then she found herself staring down at Stiles’s face, the ski-jump line of his nose in profile, the lean muscles in his thighs and his long fingers and toes. Derek had lovingly detailed the shape of his genitals beneath the gauzy wrap draped over his hips. _Maybe you’re in his league after all_ , she thought, running her fingers over Stiles’s face. She wondered why Stiles was in San Francisco, what had made him decide to find work as an artists’ model. 

But all she said was, “These aren’t entirely awful.” And they weren’t. There was a surety to the Stiles sketches that was missing in the family portraits. Maybe it was only that Derek was drawing a living person, not a memory. 

* * *

The next Friday, Derek came home with a PS3 that he couldn’t figure out how to hook up to the TV. Cora, lost in a haze of _David Copperfield_ , didn’t even have it in her to help him. 

“What, did you just get a sudden urge to play _Call of Duty?_ ” she asked, studying the sole game he’d bought. 

Derek shrugged, pretending to be deeply engrossed in the mass of cords. “Something like that.” 

When she came downstairs the next morning to find Stiles sitting beside Derek at the breakfast bar, the mystery of the video game console was explained. Soon enough, she could chart Stiles’s visits to the house by how much Derek’s pulse pounded before he was scheduled to come over. Derek, infatuated, was kind of hilarious, actually. He even did Stiles’s laundry. But still, every time Stiles came over, Derek chivalrously slept on the sofa, until Cora brought him a hammock for the roof space. 

All in all, it was kind of a relief when she stepped into the kitchen one day to find them making out against the counter.

“Don’t fuck this up,” she warned Derek before heading out to a friend’s house for the night. “I want Stiles around too. And you deserve it.”

Derek ducked his head, but didn’t argue with her. She wondered if maybe he was starting to believe it. 

* * *

Derek drew all the time now. More often than not, she’d come home to find Stiles studying on their couch while Derek disappeared into the roof space. He never showed off his drawings when he came downstairs to get started on dinner, but sometimes he would leave his sketchbook open on the counter so they could see what he was working on. That’s how Cora found the first of the family portraits. 

She recognized it at once as one of the photographs that used to hang in their upstairs hallway. She’d forgotten all about it, but now she vaguely remembered posing for it as a little girl, carefully running the brush through her mom’s thick, luxurious hair, while her mom, in turn, braided Laura’s hair. Derek had perfectly captured Laura’s soft smile, their mom’s quiet dignity, the way Cora’s brow furled in concentration as she brushed their mom’s hair. 

Cora wanted to run to his room, to tell him that this was amazing, that he’d captured a memory she might have lost forever. But if she listened, she could hear faint love noises from behind Derek’s door, smell the rich scent of arousal, and eew, no, she was definitely not going anywhere near his room tonight.

Instead she carried the sketchbook to her window seat, propping it up against the glass so she could stare at it some more. After a moment, she plucked her (still blank) journal up from the basket of books on the floor. Mind whirling, she spread the journal open across her lap. The front page was still blank, aside from the old splattering of blue ink. She reached for a pen, and started to write.

> _you rose from the fur, Venus born of oak and moonlight_  
>  _of the mud that streaked your naked skin as you unfolded_  
>  _robed in your certainty, robed in your strength_
> 
> _crowned in rubies, in fang and claws,  
>  you handed me the brush and bowed your head  
>  until your hair gleamed, thick and dark as a wolf’s pelt_

Cora hesitated with the pen poised above the paper. How could she capture exactly her mother’s duality? She wanted to write about her mother, the Alpha, the strong and dignified woman who garnered the respect of every Pack she encountered. But she also wanted to write about her mother, the mom, who’d lounged on the couch in ratty sweats watching soap operas and drinking bad coffee, who hated doing laundry, but loved chopping firewood, hearing the crack and splinter of the dry logs beneath the maul . She read back over the lines she’d written and shook her head, ripping the page from the journal.

It came out messily, leaving a jagged line of paper clinging to the spine. The journal fell to the floor. When it landed, she saw the edge of another loose page peeking out, the paper rumpled, but of a heavier weight than the journal’s pages. She reached for it, and swallowed, staring down at clumsy, sketch of their mother that she’d rescued from the recycle bin so long ago. 

Setting Derek’s sketchbook back on the counter where she’d found it, Cora hesitated a moment, then carefully laid that first, rescued sketch on top of it for Derek to find the next morning. At the bottom of the ink-blotted, torn-edged page with her own clumsy poem, she wrote, _It’s a start._

Finis.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a thing for artist!Derek, and [Hands Too Shaky To Hold](http://archiveofourown.org/works/976510) by dedougal has long been one of my favorite takes on the trope. Needless to say, I was thrilled to get a chance to remix it! If you haven't read the original story yet, you're definitely in for a treat! The general plot and a few lines of the dialogue came from that story.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated.


End file.
